Jump
by skywalker05
Summary: No, Anakin. I am your son.
1. Anakin

_A/N: The Star Wars canon and all related names, places, events and previously published dialogue belong to Mr. George Lucas._

_The original idea for this fic, the quote as in the summary, came from my brother._

_The name Ruen came in part from my Padawan._

_...I didn't do much, did I?..._

Anakin Skywalker remembered some of the feel of the old skill, in this new place, the dark-metallic underbelly of Cloud City. When the Sith Lord slammed down from above out of hiding--so pitiful how much blood had been charred! Now Anakin inhabited the body of what he had always feared to be, an eternal Padawan--Anakin could meet the red lightsaber with his own blue. Twist, both of them on a wide textured walk now, heat seeming to search for the synthflesh patches still needed on his skin.

He was driven back, room to passage down to alcove where an enormous slate-gray window, artistically and fearfully styled, looked out to an expanse, probably the secondary reactor shaft. Darth Ruen paced forward, took one hand from his lightsaber and gestured. Anakin rushed forward, taking his opportunity to the younger man's lowered guard, but he was buffeted aside by something metal colliding with his side, pushing him away to staggering footing. Metal tore and flew from the walls, almost gently pushing him around, bruising him--but the Sith would not let him die yet, and Qui-Gon had dissuaded him from _working _ toward that eventual release. Darth Ruen retreated into the shadows, a twisted smile coming to his lips.

Anakin whipped hair out of his face in the maelstrom of Force-pungency and metal components hurtling off the walls. He stepped aside from a thick conduit and bisected it with his lightsaber, watching always tracking as--one half crashed through the window, and even while he ran back and crouched away from the glass natural wind picked up, cold, and threw him off balance, off his feet, out into the void--!

Darth Ruen paced toward him, red lined cloak flaring in the rare air of the shaft, and Anakin again lifted his aching arms with the lit sword.

They came together, clash _clash_. Sparks rained from the railing of this catwalk, victim of their clumsiness, Anakin's old weakness and Ruen's inhibition--why? One deft move of Ruen's saber took Anakin's left hand and lightsaber off at the wrist.

He had to realize what had happened, realize that he was screaming, lying weak at the Sith's feet. He lifted his hand of machinery to grasp the Force but its filaments slipped through the fingers of his dilute blood. Ruen lifted Anakin on lines of energy the Jedi could barely know, and slammed him against the cluster of sensor tubes at the walkway's finish, high above anything. Anakin found a low handhold and would not release it, and tried to ignore his maim, tried not to wretch--why had it hurt more the first time?

Darth Ruen, his sword put away, stood on the catwalk and towered over Anakin now. "You are beaten." He said evenly, quietly, in snarls. "There is no escape. Join me, and we will rule the galaxy together as the last Sith." He stretched out toward Anakin, human and yet monster-eyed.

Anakin struggled up and out of the way of his foe's reach, farther around on his precarious perch and farther above. _So I must jump again--_ He shouted, "I'll never join you!"

Ruen folded his arms over his ribbed body-armor, a meshwork of black and red. Calmly emotionless he said, "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your child."

Anakin fought the hate and the tears in his eyes. If only he could leap, strike, control his younger self's unstoppable--_enough looking back at the dead_. "'He told me enough. He told me you killed it. He went and found--"

Ruen shouted, "No, Anakin! _I _ am your son."

Anakin had come to far to speak. He went the unspeakable--he jumped again--


	2. ObiWan

_A/N: Thanks be to the many many people who reviewed this! **JediMan, Uhm,** and** Quillian**; this was intended to be a little confusing about what happened to make it like it is. If there is more confusion than that by all means yell at me about it again, but these chapters going up now will give explanations and extrapolations..._

Jump

Part II

Obi-Wan Kenobi was not truly a sentient man at this moment, just as he had not been when he'd fought the general Grievous on Utapau.

He was the Force, the whirlwind, the light, as he leapt, attacking without antagonisms and missing his planned cut, and rolled onto the near-burning shore. He got a second's look at his former Padawan, dark-haired fierce Anakin Skywalker, poised on a tiny relay droid's casing as it hovered over the lava flows that dipped ponderously toward the cataract's lethal edge.

Anakin jumped, a surge of final effort, pain and darkness. Obi-Wan's lightsaber scored a sear down his left side then he fell, ungainly, higher up the shoreline that was beginning to char Obi-Wan's hair. Anakin–Darth Vader, _I must know him as the Sith!_–crawled a few paces and screamed at the fury of the black sand getting on his hands and against his face. Obi-Wan leveled his lightsaber at the younger man, whose weapon had rolled down the hillside and vanished with a plash of flare into the conflagration.

Obi-Wan the Jedi Master prepared to kill his best friend, the helpless Sith before him. Obi-Wan the man screamed over roaring Mustafar; "You were the chosen one! It was said you would _destroy_ the Sith, not _join _them! It was you who would bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness! You were my _brother_, Anakin."

"Obi-Wan..." And the Force felt a spark of hope arise in the dying thoughts of the darkened Jedi. "Help me..."

Obi-Wan surged up the hillside and roughly pulled Anakin up by one arm, in his own act of exasperation or desperation. "You killed them." He could sense walls and buttresses of Anakin's spirit purely falling apart.

"Darth Vader killed them." Something warred within Anakin, fiery as lava, and Obi-Wan the man didn't want to be able to understand what it was. Anakin cried silently, and the tears turned to steam before they hit the ground. "He said I could save her. He made me destroy her! Obi-wan–!"

It was all about Padmé? The Jedi could barely believe it, and had to think, _how contrite and proving_!

"Come on then." said the Force through him. "You can still save her."

They struggled up each black hill, leaning on each other and on the energy that poured from Obi-Wan to his fallen apprentice, spiraling in like star-stuff to a black hole and disappearing, to all Obi-Wan's perceptions canceled out.

All to late. The Chancellor's shuttle–the Emperor's, Obi-Wan reminded himself bitterly–set down on the same platform that the Jedi neared after their aeons-seeming hike, the same one holding Padmé's ship, and the two companion-like droids. Obi-Wan and Anakin, the Master willful and the Knight shattered enough to do exactly what he was told, crouched behind a great boulder and breathed the cooler, brimstone-scented air.

Palpatine/Sidious took Padmé away in a strange, sophisticated medical vehicle. Clone troopers commandeered the Nubian skiff, but only took the droids to Palpatine's shuttle.

After it took off, Anakin went to the platform and fell to his knees. Obi-Wan thought he was going to die. "No..." He said, and then shouted to the sky, "You took my child from me! _Murderer_! Padmé!"

Obi-Wan sedated him on the ship, and went to sleep until he got the message from Yoda to meet at a certain medical station on a world called Polis Massa, in a galaxy where only two Jedi Masters remained.

He was immediately relieved to learn that he would not be rehabilitating Anakin on his own.


	3. Luke and Leia

Jump

Part III

"How long have I kept you safe? How long have I watched you? This galaxy is your cradle, my child."

Danae Palpatine–her mind gave no whisper of the name Leia Organa, never so much as a whisper of Skywalker–stared into the face on the portable holoprojector before her and thought about how incredibly right her father was. His gaunt face–underground newsreels had called him ugly, but those were the same underground Rebels she ferreted out for their terroristic crimes–had long been a solid ground to her. Had long been the only ground, until her destiny had come–she smiled. "Thank you father. I will not fail!"

She placed the holoprojector down on a shelf on this balcony of Coruscant and stepped out into the light, into the eyes of the crowd gathered on buildings' sides and floating platforms on prestigious Republica avenue. Her gray-green uniform was perfectly placed and starched, her hair styled between military functionality and the ornateness of perfection in two large curls over her ears.

"Citizens of the Galactic Empire." Her voice carried over them, toned and beautiful as a princess should be. "I announce to you today the full founding of our triumph, with the disbanding of the Senate..."

Darth Ruen watched Emperor Palpatine, intent on the comm call to Coruscant, when the apprentice dark lord had finished completing his training gear with the light, ribbed vest. He emerged to see the emperor as he usually was, with figurative hands in myriad parts of galactic workings. Personal combat, space-war, espionage, pure politics, history; he had a hand in all of them. Though 'hands in history' was a new addition to Ruen's repetitive thoughts...

Palpatine swept from the holoprojector toward Ruen and the door to his combat floor on board the Destroyer flagship _Executor _. "I have set up a new sort of test for you today, my apprentice. it is decisive, difficult, and to the death. Enter there."

Ruen turned and passed through the curtain to the training floor, a dark-chromed room with harsh lights and the right-hand wall glassed to space. Instead of droids or captives against which to test Ruen's survival ('to the death' being no new thing) a rather attractive human woman stood there, red hair flowing around her face and green tunic, holding a red lightsaber down in her left hand.

Ruen stepped into the ring opposite the woman; Palpatine remained beside the entrance. He said, "She is Mara Jade, one of my elite Dark Jedi. This is her test as well--if she kills you, Ruen, she takes your place."

He waved his apprentice forward. Ruen unsheathed his lightsaber at high guard. His opponent approached without circling.

They came together with a few intense flourishless strikes, then locked swords. She tried to Force-push him; he turned that power back to her. She flung it aside. Sparks of perception flew between them, little glimpses of erudition--

Ruen wrenched the outer fields of their lightsabers apart and went for her side; she blocked. Fight raged out to the corners of the room in the Force, and both combatants could use its emotionfull roiling skillfully, selfishly. She leapt and spun over him; he pushed his blade up to impale her there but she was too quick and cut in. His blade fell and caught it. He saw the evenness of their prowess but calculated; he would not use the greatest weapon yet. Lightsaber flashes and pressure came fast as thought.

Reflections on the glass-place and then they were up against it, made unaware of surroundings by the newness, finalness of the fight. It had been final before, but never so hard without variable. Lightsaber gleams scored the thick glass. Ruen's teeth bared with the exertion and moment-by-moment danger. He knew how her speed grew from rage and her skill from unseeing dark side madness--he was reassured in his ability to step mentally away from that berserk strength.

Ruen sensed the change about to arrive and cut in close for Mara's separating hands, circling out away from the window. His blade singed her sleeve but she switched her saber to the right hand and clumsily blocked singly, pushed him away, while her free hand went into a hip pocket and brought out a Merr-Sonn B22 palm blaster. Anger scoured the air. Ruen went into guard--

about six shots thudded in a fast circle into Ruen's armored chest. He glared; the Force closed Mara Jade in a vicegrip-bind while he deflected a pair of remaining blaster bolts and regained his balance. She started to rise, the raw-harnessed vigor of the Force, captured by their unlike minds, battling invisibly between them. Mara was constrained to her knees again. She shot his legs, saber dropping from her other hand from the holding pressure he employed.

Ruen screamed quietly and went down on one knee, light-energy shooting through his left leg though he had dissipated the actual damage, and swept his saber up through the other Sith's neck.

She died quickly, and he released the little bits of knowledge and personality she had projected during the fight. He returned to Palpatine and bowed. As usual the Emperor let slip an arrogant pleasure. "Good, good.", he said, as though it had all been for his enjoyment.


	4. Another Anakin Chapter

_More immense thanks to the reviewers. If you request a certain scene or explanation, I may write it. _

**Jump**

**IV**

Anakin rushed through the halls of the Hoth base with Dack, Hobbie, all the others he had met since finding passage off of Tatooine on the spur of Mon Mothma's "Generals, you're our only hope..." It had taken so long to return to a mask of his former, almost-Chosen self with the help of his Master Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon who appeared corporeal sometimes for his protégés' convenience, and Yoda as a voice on a Jedi signal device Anakin had retrofitted into an interspatial commlink. Again they played a step above the military; again a rugged strange band would draw attention to the Rebellion.

Imperial forces had swept into Echo Base before the Jedi and others had even gotten to their ships to repel the attack on the power generator.

Obi-Wan -- the troops knew him as Ben, ancient skilled warrior with his semitragic companion--signaled for their group to flank a doorway to a secondary hanger . His whitening hair and white clothing almost blended into the ice-colored walls. "The Dark Lord is in there.", he said calmly.

Dull anger and pain raised its toothless head beneath Anakin's control; Obi-Wan had taught him peace after the worst times in the house in the Dune Sea, while Anakin was still numb to his healing body and Force ability and while Palpatine and his new minion, Ruen (an old Order's Padawan) had captured and killed Anakin's child after--after Padmé died.

Obi-Wan continued, "Leave him to me. Take the stormtroopers." He looked at the fighting men and broken Jedi, and the Imperials opened the door with loud blasterfire pouring in.

Anakin shifted some of the smoke and slipped inside, began whetting his saber edge on unseen stormtroopers. He tripped against other Rebels, walked flat-footed, but kept on, kept moving, tracked the troops. This hanger held the _Millennium Falcon _in its cold light, and Anakin came around one of that ship's legs in a swift quiet moment when the shouts and chaos of the fighting men were muffled.

Obi-Wan stepped out from behind another angle of the ship and Darth Ruen, a slim human Anakin knew only from the Battle of Yavin, came opposite from the smoke of his stormtroopers' guns.

Ruen said to Obi-Wan, "I've been waiting for you, Jedi. We meet at last."

Obi-wan moved into a stance of his new technique, useful for his venerable strength and Anakin's crippled might. He mumbled, imbued with the Force as far as Anakin could tell from where he stood pinioned by surprise. "You are only a master of evil, Darth..."

Their lightsabers struck together once, twice, enough for Anakin to start toward them. Obi-wan deftly caught an overhead strike sideways, and while the Lord Ruen swept his blade in again the Jedi fixed Anakin intently in his gaze. _No_, the look seemed to say, coursing command through the remaining circuits of Anakin's Force-knowledge. _No, these are things meant to be. _Ruen's saber came against Obi-Wan's stability in twists, eights, innovative tight cuts, and his lips twitched back over his teeth in echoes at the impact of each exchange.

The red blade fell down and Obi-Wan pulled his block up to it.

"You are weak, old man."

Obi-Wan was failing, seizing his guard closer and closer to himself, leading the fight in a straight line. He stopped, the Force sinking like the deepness in his eyes. 'You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

"Yes...", said Ruen, and stepped, and stabbed.

Anakin surged forward again, and stopped when his Master's cloak fell to the ground empty. The pool of the Force whirlpooled down before him like blue calmness. He staggered, stalled. Ruen poked the white cloak with a deft foot and switched his gaze to Anakin with the mismatched lightsabers held down in their hands.

They stared and hated each other.

Ruen quietly said, "You can not do this."

A squad of orange-suited rebels paused in their flowing toward the Imperial saboteurs. Some stood in the doorway along with one of his acquaintances, a pilot. "Anakin!", she shouted.

Like an echo, Obi-Wan's voice and presence resounded for him. "Run, Anakin! Run."

The Jedi limped to the communal arms of his squadron.


	5. RotJ part 1

**Jump **

**VI**

In the coolness and pine-scent of Endor's evening an AT-AT lumbered to the infamous shield generator base and deposited stormtroopers, a sallow Imperial commander, and Anakin Skywalker.

The binders chafed his hands but he looked calmly at Darth Ruen, who stood on the walkway before him closer than they had ever been. He had the single-minded mission Obi-Wan had forever been attempting to teach him to refine; teach Ruen his past and purpose. At least, turn him to the light side.

The Imperial said, "This is a Rebel that surrendered to us. Although he denies it, I believe there may be more of them, and I request permission to conduct a further search of the area. He was armed only with this."

He set Anakin's lightsaber into Ruen's gloved hand and the young Sith stared between them. "Good work. Now leave us. Conduct your search and bring his companions to me."

The Imperial turned in the curt way of his breed, and left the two men watching the lightsaber as if one or the other might bring it to life without a movement. Then Ruen turned gently and they walked together through the transparent corridor. Anakin wore the cloth of an orange flightsuit; Ruen his black and red armor and cape that obscured his thin build.

He said to the Jedi, "The Emperor has been expecting you."

Anakin, driven inside, managed, "I know, my son."

Ruen growled, "So you have accepted the truth."

Anakin stopped; the other stopped with him under the tree-shadows. "I've accepted the truth that you were born with a purpose following the light side. You were to be _Luke Skywalker._"

Inflectionless, Ruen said, "That name means nothing to me."  
Anakin's voice raised. "It is the name of your true self! You have only been denied. I know there is good in you. The Emperor can not shape your mind fully." Anakin clamped his hands around the metal railing and savored its chill. "That is why you did not kill me on Hoth. And it is why you won't bring me to your emperor now."

Ruen's fiery Sith-natural eyes glared eternally. "You are not what the Emperor has foreseen. He did not want a weak Chosen One who could not kill under command."

A harsh pang of pain cut at Anakin's memory. How many times he had stood in that bright office--

Anakin pleaded, "Come with me."

"You have never experienced the true power of the dark side. I must obey my Master."

Anakin did not want to meet those eyes, but he had been doing many things he had not wanted to do since Mustafar--no, since the death of Master Windu. "I will not turn again." He said. "You'll be forced to kill me."

Did something jolt Ruen's strong mind? "If that is your destiny--"

"Search your feelings, my son." Anakin rasped. "You can't do this. I know the conflict within you, I feel the hate."

Did something jolt Ruen's strong gaze? "You have come to late for me, father." He indicated stormtrooper guards at the nearby turbolift (to the docking bay. _They were really coming to take him to Palpatine again. What if very ignorance, twenty-three years of ignorance, forced him to the wrong choice again?_) The troopers stepped up to Anakin as Ruen said, "The Emperor will show you the true fulfillment of the Force. He is your Master now."

Anakin whispered, "Then my son is truly dead."

As the turbolift doors closed and he awkwardly stood between the stormtroopers there Anakin saw Ruen stand at the railing and look out, still holding Anakin's old lightsaber; the Jedi locked his eyes to the young man and dared both of them to know what Ruen was thinking. Was it questions of loyalties? Was it a boreing away of the fatherlike image Anakin had also seen in Palpatine?

The thought that occupied him up the short ride with the door blank and shut stemmed from this; had both of them, lacking, sought a father figure in the personal control of the dark side?


	6. RotJ part 2

VIPalpatine sat now in a dead-looking throne room, a place of gray metal and bare conduits instead of art and sunlight. He cultivated no holier-than-corruption mein now, but displayed his Jedi-scarred face in a contrasting cowl and robed outfit of dull black. The viewport behind his square-winged chair showed flashes and ripples of emotion from the Endor space battle.

Ruen swept Anakin up in his wake, up the metallic stairs, and stood straight and silent.

Anakin found himself thinking; _He is strong. I could be proud._

Palpatine croaked in his voice of wily control, "Welcome, Skywalker. I have been expecting you." Condescendingly he glanced at the binders. "You no longer need those." With a twist of the dark side they clunked against the floor and Anakin shook his phantom-twinging hands.

Palpatine ordered the red-robed guards away.

Anakin surprised himself by being able to see black and white. Once he had been dark, but now he opposed that lapse, that momentary cataclysm, and opposed Palpatine, and opposed his son–

The emperor said, "You have returned." Softly he cackled. "Come again to call _me_ Master."

"No," said Anakin. "You're gravely mistaken. I have come to save my son from the path you led me on."

Palpatine rose, with a grace now that Anakin could barely believe after all these years and the age inflicted on himself, and descended the shining floor toward his acolyte. "Oh no, my young Jedi. You will find that it is you who are mistaken...about a great many things."

Palpatine had lost all friendship toward Anakin that he had shown him since childhood, and even all pretense of weakness such as he had shown him in the fight against Mace, and even all gritty teaching he had shown him in the dark time and must have shown Dooku and Grievous. Anakin remembered Obi-Wan and asked the Force its permission to act.

"His lightsaber," muttered Ruen, and handed over the weapon to Palpatine's pale hand.

The emperor almost sighed. "Ah yes, this Jedi's weapon. Do you remember what you have done with it? You know that your son can not be turned from the dark side. And neither _can you._"

Ruen kept his face as still and dead as Grievous' metal visage, except that the human's eyes also seemed shadowy, blood-red.

"It will not matter. Soon I'll be dead...and you with me." The Rebels play-fought on the edge of his thoughts.

_No. Real-fight..._

Palpatine crowed, "Perhaps you refer to the imminent attack of your rebel fleet."

_The Death Star Run...he knows._

"Yes! I assure you we are quite safe from your friends here." He intoned, and crept back toward his throne.

But it would work. "You overconfidence is your weakness."

Palpatine turned, and snapped, "Your faith in your friends has always been yours."

_I had faith in Mace...and it broke. Faith did not raise its head in the Council Chamber, and so I had none in Obi-Wan–but that has been long mended. Long mended._

Ruen said, "It is pointless to resist, father."

_He calls me father. _

But Palpatine stole any victory from him. "Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. Your friends out there on the sanctuary moon are walking into a trap, as is your Rebel fleet!

"It was _I_ who allowed the Alliance to know the location of the shield generator. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops await them."

Anakin found himself wondering whether the acquaintances he had made were good enough, and swamped his mind with the light side instead.

It showed far away. _They cannot. _He stared at his old blue lightsaber and wondered whether he could point it at Palpatine again.

The emperor's voice dripped with false pity. "Oh...I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive."

"I gave you power, boy. Look." Anakin stepped to the window beside the dark throne, and Ruen paced him like a bodyguard. "You could be _commanding _this yourself."

A pinpoint light show of a military clash swept around the Death Star.

Palpatine touched the lightsaber, laying beside him on the chair, with his fingertips. "You want this, don't you boy? Fulfill your Sith legacy. Strike me down with it. Give in to your anger."

Some of that felt like a release. Permission, to attack the old Master.

But to the wavering, eternal Force it felt like a test, and Anakin struggled against beautiful revenge, struggled to keep his eyes on his target, his son.

"You have spent years only becoming more my own." Palpatine continued, and Anakin searched for proof to deny that. What was he doing here? "No!"

"It is unavoidable," Palpatine stated as if discussing trade minutiae. "It is your destiny. Like your son, you are now _mine._"

And to his terror, it felt familiar.

It felt _motivating._

Anakin's middle-learned power tore the lightsaber into his hand of metal and circuits. _Finally_, he fed momentum on the _thrum _of the blue blade and swung at Palpatine's neck. Smoothly, precognatively, Ruen drew his own blade and twisted Anakin's stiff limbs with his lightsaber away from the emperor.

Palpatine stared at the crisscross, but his hands found a button on the throne's arm and he spoke to it with excitement, "Fire at will, commander!"

The Death Star's unprepared superlaser coalesced and stabbed into a Mon Cal capital ship in the near distance, raining it with particles of itself.

Anakin remembered that sinking, sour feeling of the world falling apart around him.


	7. RotJ part 3

VIII

R.o.t.J. part III

The lightsabers flashed their martial pattern together, and Anakin had not fought like this in a long time. Ruen played with catching his father's slow attacks. But Anakin _had _ fought like this before, with Obi-Wan his only father and now Ruen his son. It all gauged to point of view.

Suddenly he could feel the Force fueling him, not even sure which side it hailed from, and after a bout of parries which stung his hands a determined blow halted Ruen's twisting slash for Anakin's neck. The humming blade-fields locked; Anakin employed one of many half-remembered dueling techniques and _shoved_.

Darth Ruen's exquisite balance twisted on his lanky frame at the very edge of the staircase. He fell into a liquid but limping four-point crouch at the bottom with the red lightsaber deactivated in his hand.

Palpatine crowed from above. "That's it! _Use _your aggressive feelings, boy. Attack! Let the hate _flow _through you."

But Anakin had stilled. Inside, yes, he remembered power, prowess, admiration, and savored the feelings returning. He felt how he deserved them! Ruen had gone through no terrors to gain him power! Anakin held all the authority, all the solidness of a father! Or no! Despite the evidence, this was not what a father was supposed to do, punishing his son for another man's, Palpatine's, faulty influence, like two Sith Lords each aimed for killing to gain or retain the title of Master...but no, now Anakin was becoming confused. The light side of the Force patiently reminded him that his mission was to save, turn, _protect _his son Ruen from the dark side. Luke...

...the boy who had stood and ferally grinned up at Anakin, so ready to fight.

"I will not fight you, son," rasped Anakin. "Here," and, to extremely prove all, he threw his lightsaber down the stairs so that it clattered into a stripe of hard shadow near Ruen's feet.

Ruen _laughed. _"You underestimate the power of the dark side, Anakin. Worry about saving your friends on Endor now--that is more likely than converting me, or _you_, or my _sister_."

Anakin's fear of physical attack swept away. "What!"

Ruen's voice lowered as he came slowly up the light-striped stairs. "She truly believes herself to be the emperor's daughter. Perhaps you have heard of our Danae? She is his hand in politics, but she could be just as useful as an acolyte of the dark side...whether or not you succeed in changing."

"A daughter was to be named Leia!" Anakin had never forgotten those never-used names.His terror and fear for a twin child he had never known existed blinded all reason for a surge of energy toward the foe so long in his gray tunnel vision. He leapt down the stairs, lightsaber slapping into his clenching hands, suddenly viewing Ruen as a cruel, cruel failure--

His forceful attack surprised both of them. His violent strikes pushed the younger Skywalker across the bridge area, pounded at him, kicked when Ruen's fluid 'saber style grew tired and choppy--finally, the young Sith's legs crumpled under him next to the pipe-like railing. Anakin sliced an X into Ruen's chest armor and pointed the blue lightsaber at his throat. The armor's burnt material curled back like charred petals and revealed only pale skin beneath, and rough breathing. Still controlled breathing, but it pushed at thick muscle and pained in the Force--

Anakin began to speak, perhaps of the defeat that had heralded his own redemption, but Palpatine began to _applaud._ The staccato clapping echoed and punctuated the emperor's stoic movement down the stairs behind Anakin.

"Good, good! You hate has always made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and regain your place at my side!"

Anakin gathered his voice like a jump beneath him. "Never! I'll never kill for you again, your highness. I am a Jedi, as our order was before me!"

A momentary quizzical look fell over Palpatine's face. Anakin grasped the good Force which had given him conviction and sustained himself with it. Now would come the last battle?

He could sense what was so come as Palpatine croaked out his next words, and focused himself to walk through it.

"Young fool. You will pay the price for your lack of vision!"

However, Anakin could do nothing when the lightning came. Worse than Dooku's, though it wiped all perspective except for _now is pain _entirely away, the lightning's intensity and evil only grew worse. Barely did he feel himself reeling, curling around a table-sized sensor pod, shaking--_this is what it is to be an old man--_"Luke, please!"

Daring to hope...hope died when Ruen crawled to Palpatine's side and stood watching. Anakin felt himself escaping, blacking out or dying, and in the Force a tiny eke of something like bright faith bleeding out of him, like servo fluid--

The Ruen caught the Dark Lord around the body and neck, caught lightning that snapped his head up and rifled through his hair, but he lifted Palpatine up and heaved the stiff body over the walkway's side. Anakin's pain blissfully doused, though the shaking would not stop.

Blue smoke and light like out of a meteor's impact billowed out and back in to the service pit's depths.

Ruen sat down with blue fire between his teeth and collapsed almost into the pit.

Anakin drug himself to the other man's side, and with a will he did not remember afterward pulled him back from the edge. Anakin's right arm had short-circuited into dead weight, but somehow, between them, Anakin and Luke remained leaning up against the railing and each other.


	8. A New Hope and fin

**Jump**

**IX**

**A New Hope**

The Force could not slacken its support. Anakin somehow still breathed through burning. His arm and hand of metal felt heavy, dangerously thick with electricity, but no telltale buzz warned him of deadly malfunction. He thought that death by fire was long overdue for him. His spirit, the most grievous of all his wounded parts, tangled with that of the boy whose blonde head lay still against his shoulder, the neck of the predator bared for the hunter's killing strike.

Then Ruen regained himself in the space of heartbeats and flinched away from the touch they had. Against the railings he crouched and stared at Anakin. "I don't know you." He spoke in a soft, unused version of his disguised growling voice. "I think you're weak.

I know you anyway. I saved you. You deceived me!"

"No, Luke," said Anakin. "I'm your father." _I wouldn't. I couldn't even fight to save my friends. But you fought to save your enemy because...some inkling of love is in you._

Both Skywalkers cast outward to the starships piercing into the Death Star's heart.

**L**uke Skywalker raged inside, and yet the power had gone out of that, because he had felt an urge and a sense with more power. Just for a moment. And this dying half-machine man in front of him, whom Master Sidious always termed the weakest of the Jedi sinecure, had inspired something new in his deep self. His words had--but more his sacrifice, and his belief that his son would save him.

Again Anakin was pulling him along in his wake, or perhaps falling and Ruen had been caught in the slipstream, because the old scarred raspy Jedi pushed himself up to a crouch and then stood with one hand desperately grasping for a support and his eyes closed. "You're...coming with me."

Ruen had killed for this man.

He knew how to follow the one he killed for. But he had just killed that one, threw him down the pit and that amount of lightning had been easy, but understanding that he had just been rescued was not.

**A**nakin said, "This is what the light side means, Luke. Now we're both saved. If--"

The Force, Light and alone and wondrous, supported him. Anakin said, "Please come with me."

Ruen nodded and pulled Anakin up by the neck-insulation of his flightsuit. "I want to understand this...side. Father."

Anakin managed to shake his head. "You already have, Luke. You already...have..."

Anakin Skywalker released his destiny to the Force and to his son's arcane strength and to the simple allure of sleep.

**L**uke Skywalker felt very clear and fightless.

As if danger had passed.

Slowly the Force came to him in a new way, so quiet as to be almost a whisper, but also not tugged or trapped but on its own. It started to tell him a quick way to the Lambda shuttle, and then it wove into the familiar the new beautiful telling of safety and reassurance.

**T**he stars had a new partner in fusion that balmy evening on the moon of Endor. The Rebels, successful in their defiant plot, celebrated, atoned and felt mystical among the natives and the candlelight and the camaraderie.

Luke Skywalker hid himself among the folds of an enormous tree's trunk, and let the Ewoks take his battle-armor for their hollow piping music. He wore a brown-green vest and the loose, black pants. He wanted to leave the heaviness of his lightsabers somewhere behind the revelry, but Anakin had not allowed it.

Upon awakening, Anakin became a master of troops again. The Chosen One walked among the Rebels and spread his balance through them. Random acts of kindness bloomed, and Anakin smiled even though it pained so badly. Eventually they stood together.

Love nulls pain.

Try it. Think about it. Standing in the fight, surrounded by the pain, you love your sport or work or attempts, and the pain does not matter.

Anakin Skywalker now realized how important he truly was, and Luke Skywalker realized how wrong he truly had been.

Leia Skywalker raged on Coruscant and demanded retribution against the terrorists who had blown up the Death Star. But a few months later, two people would visit her.

They would be sitting in her chrome reception room with brown cloaks concealing their fine features, and she would demand explanation of them.

In tandem, as family, they would touch a hidden power within her and she would be reminded of who they said had killed her father.

A Jedi Master.

She would raise her hands against them, and then realize that the power felt more ancient than any person or any government.

The old man would reveal his face, and his powerful speech stabilized between arrogant and so gentle would explain to her her origins.

The young man, creepy Darth Ruen -- alive, traitorous, happy, human-- would retell the story of the Death Star explosion.

Both were partly motivated by a blue-shining memory of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda standing on Endor, smiling at the family of Chosen Ones.

Together they would begin to remake a galaxy.


End file.
